posted in Technology
AI bet goes awry: Oracle fires 21,000 employees
www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/tech-and-start-ups/article-903442
The Jerusalem Post | JPost.comAI bet goes awry: Oracle fires 21,000 employees | The Jerusalem PostOracle laid off ~13% of its staff to fund a $300B computing deal with OpenAI. Now, a credit downgrade and $7B in required power grid guarantees put the massive project in jeopardy.
Replying to @sanitation@lemmy.today
I wonder if it’s related at all to this ongoing trend ( How Money Works on YouTube). Tech Bros got sore about the post-epidemic culture at their companies: People wanted to work from home, and knew that their talent was important so they got bold asking for pay raises and benefits.
And the tech bros took this personally. So first came the RTO mandates (which got rid of some techs, specifically the best and brightest) and then came later layoffs, some of which were blamed on AI automation.
AI automation was never actually that much further along.
Anyway, they laid off too many people, to the point that the remaining workforce didn’t know how to run the business and the tech. So they had to hire back some of the greybeards, and are still replacing lost positions with rookies fresh out of college.
YouTubeBig Tech Cut 950,000 Jobs... And Then Hired Them All Back
Replying to @uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone
I think this layout is 100% about S&P downgrading Oracle’s credit rating to one step above junk. They’re on the hook for the WB acquisition and the data centre build out for OpenAI, both of which look hugely negative. Wisconsin (data centre location) just sent the a bill for $7B because they don’t trust oracle to pay the future costs to the state the development would incur.
With no credit rating, and not much liquid cash all they can do is cut costs. Hence layoff.